Artistic Nucleus

With little masters unbeaten double century,India sealed there series win against the South Africans and retained that no.2 spot in the ODI rankings.It was a perfect team effort in Gwalior.Bowling has been improved a lot than the previous match in jaipur.Now they are looking for series wash out against them. With weaker side,India outplayed their opponents right from the begining of the series.Captain Dhoni has put up a brilliant performance with the bat.Scored 69* of just 35 balls and played the last ten overs just like a power play.None of the bowlers were able to stop him from going over those boundary rope.It was yousuf pathan who utilised the third power play really well and gone for some big hits of the balls that bowled on the line.This man with his enormous hand power has cleared rope very easily which others might have felt litle bit difficult.The 174 run partnership between sachin and karthik was the turning poing of the game and they led the platform for this emphatic victory.Bowlers also came up with equal performance compared to their batsmen.praveen kumar and sreesanth had some swing in their first spell.Jadeja also got some turn and took couple of important wickets.In the end it was perfect team effort from Men in blue.

Once again sachin has proved that age is not a barrier for masters.Nearing 37,he has become the first batsman to score double ton in ODI.In this season he has scored 7 centuries including 3 in the ODI and 4 in the test.His previus highest scores are 168* versus newzealand in christchurch,175 versus Australia in Hyderabad,186* versus newzealand in Hyderabad and 200* now in gwalior versus southafrica.He achieved this against the bowlers of world class team.He made us to rewrite those history books.

The thing that is to be highlighted is that when saaed anwar of pakistan scored his best 194 versus india in madras during the year 1997,we didn't have world class bowlers with us.Similarily charles coventry of Zimbabwe hit 194* against a team which is the last in rankings.Out of the total scores that are in the ranges between 185 and 194,Viv richards who got 189 has to be praised for his brilliance.But that too came in the early eighties during which the number of overs were 60.His last three best scores in the ODI came in the very short span of time i.e. less than 10 months.Sachin definitely desrves this emphatic record.
With this,the number of centuries to his credit in the ODI is 46 and his overall century in the International cricket is 93.The six which sachin hitted over the cover drive of the Dale steyn's ball was simply a stunning one.Another happy moment of this match is he never asked for by runner and managed on his own to take 52 singles in his innings.He has batted all the 50 overs and willing to bat 50 overs once again.This simply shows his passion for cricket and it was a perfect treat for his fans across the globe.Saed anwar when he took his highest score in ODI ,he used byrunner.It took 442 matches and twenty years for him to ahieve this record.For most of the youngsters in the world cricket,he has become a perfect role model.

With this win India sealed there series against South Africa and retained that no.2 spot in the ODI rankings.Sachin simply sticked to his strategy and played his traditional shots .Right from the first over,he showed his domination over the world's best fast bowlers.He made India and the cricketing world feel proud.It seems that when this master retires,the fantasy for the cricket may go down slowly.

Well the sources from BCCI says that Gambhir is the next Mr.consistent of India after sunil gavaskar.He has scored centuries in his last three matches succesively and his knock in those matches were match saving one.He has been declared as the ICC test player of the year 2009.In 2008 he has got most number of runs in the test matches.He has been ranked 1 in the ICC rank list for test matches.His 167 against the srilanka at Green's park in kanpur was brilliant.Some of those runs were scored with India in a strong position and pressing for a win, while others came in backs-to-the-walls situations that required him to bat long periods. He managed both superbly. On India's successful tour of New Zealand in 2009 Gambhir removed some question marks over his temperament and batting outside the subcontinent. He scored a series-topping 445 runs on the tour and his contributions were massive - Gambhir set up a win in Hamilton, saved a match that looked lost in Napier, and batted New Zealand out in Wellington - the three main jobs an opener is expected to do. His feats since 2008 helped him bag the Arjuna Award.

Rahul Dravid completed his 28th test century and moved into fourth place on the all-time scorers list. Dravid made a superb 144 to surpass the Allan borders score in the test cricket.Now he is among the top five run getters in the test cricket history.Tendulkar tops the list and he is followed by Brain lara of windies team,Ricky ponting of Australia .So Dravid is fourth in the list.Proud to say that out of five, top two are indians.He has played 136 test matches and has scored 11,192 runs which includes 28 centuries and 57 half centuries.Another achievement for Mr.Great wall of India is his 186 catches in the test cricket which is the highest number in the test cricket. Well the former Indian captain's journey in the test cricket began all the way from Lords during the year 1996 in june.In that debut match against England at Lords he made a brilliant 95 in the first innings to take the lead.Besides this he made five double centuries.His highest score so far in the test match is 270 versus Pakistan in Rawalpindi during the year april 2004.

Gautam Gambhir has become the first India batsman in over four years to head the batting rankings after a double failure by Mohammad Yousuf dropped him out of the top three of the Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings for Test batsmen.The 27-year-old left-handed opener is the first India batsman after former captain Rahul Dravid to top the batting chart. Dravid had briefly become the number-one batsman after hitting centuries in each innings (110 and 135) of the Kolkata Test against Pakistan in March 2005. Dravid had first achieved the top batting ranking in January 1999 and has been number-one for 36 Tests between 1999 and 2005.Both the Test and ODI batting rankings are now headed by India batsman with Mahendra Singh Dhoni in number-one position of the Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings for ODI batsmen with Yuvraj Singh in second place